More Final Fantasy

[English Language]

Currently stuck on Necrophobia. He is, unfortunatly, giving me more trouble than I expected. I do have a solution, however I'm going to need to farm for some items...and likely get some more Elixirs.

[English Language]

And success! First thing I needed was to farm Staves of Light. Unfortunately, that meant hunting for Metamorphs in the Waterfall cave section of the Void, which took a while. I farmed until I had 4, but I ended up only needing three. For equipment, Haste Shoes and as much M.Def as I could muster were needed. As soon as the fight opens, I charged Divine Judgement as Necrophobia was talking, then survive the first round of casting(took 2 carefully timed Elixirs), then hope Divine Judgement wipes out the MP of as many Barriers as possible. It only got one during this run, but that was enough.

After that, I just had to survive until the Barriers ran themselves out of MP which didn't take that long to be honest. Once they were out of the way, I !Predicted them until only one remained, then set up Golem. Then I slowly beat the last one down with the Sage's Staff. As soon as it goes down, I charge another Divine Judgement, which goes off by the time Necrophobia stops talking. I throw a Staff of Light at him and Divine Judgement immediately blasts him. Necrophobia does his thing and I throw 2 more Staves to end him before he gets another turn.

Unfortunately, beyond the first Divine Judgement, !Predict isn't very good here because it simply takes too long to charge, and Condemn would do too little damage even if it did work on him, so Staves of Light were my only consistent means of good damage.

Anyhow, now that that's done with, I'll leave the Void to recharge the Lamp and restock my Elixirs before fighting Exdeath.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Amusing factoid: The FFX HD remake has outsold FF13-3! It also beat the latest Zelda on its opening week.

http://www.psxextreme.com/ps3-news/13894.html

[English Language]

Oracle Update
----------------
Neo Exdeath is a major pain, given how I have no protection against Stone(what I would give to be able to equip this Aegis Shield).
Unfortunately, !Predict not scaling with level, while great early game due to it's power, is showing its ugly side, dealing around 1k damage a shot(it can deal more, but what digit the enemy's Hp ends in is way too random to be reliable) and is delayed, while my Sage Staff attacks are only about 300 or so, regardless of row. Neo Exdeath's Tree form has 49k hit points. This is not good. However, I do have one out however, which is the same out I needed for Necrophobia. Namely, Staves of Light. With no Holy weakness however, I need more, at least 10 if my estimate is right. I currently have 1. Metamorphs are the rarest encounter in the Void's waterfall cave area and Light Staves drop at a 1/16 rate.

But wait, it gets worse. With !Predict having unreliable and delayed damage, Neo Exdeath's second phase gets dragged on way too long and I want the Grand Cross part out ASAP. This means, you guessed it, more Staff farming. 55,000 HP means about 15 or so Light Staves, meaning I need to farm about 25-30 of the things. This is going to take a while.

[T-hawk]

I used save-states to shortcut the Staff of Light farming for my Red Mage on Neo Exdeath. I wouldn't judge adversely anyone else who did too. Or even without using save-states, you can take advantage of the GBA version quirk that the second monster encounter after a reset and reload is always the rare one.

[English Language]

Yeah, been taking plenty of advantage of the quicksave thing and have 10 already(I actually started yesterday, but didn't update)

In the meantime, I've also been playing through the Custom Class mod for FFVA.

http://www.jeffludwig.com/ff5a/download.php

Some of the changes are pretty neat, and having the 4 GBA exclusive classes at the same time you get the regular classes really ups their usefulness. Still trying to figure out where some of the Dark Arts were changed to though(I got Dark Haze from the Objet d'Artes instead of Hellwind).

Every class is kinda like Mime now too.
FFVA's battle menu typically works like....
!Fight
!Class Ability
(ability slot)
!Item

The mod changes every class to....
!Class Ability
(ability slot)
(ability slot)
(ability slot)

!Fight and !Item are set off to the side as choose-able options like Mime.

How stats work also changes around. Each character has a much bigger impact on the stats now. Bartz is still pretty close to the same though, being a jack-of-all-trades in terms of stats, Galuf is a strong tanky dude, etc. Class still impacts your stats, built not quite as much from what I see, and what abilities you equip also affects your stats(!Attack gives you a +3 to Strength, !Item gives a +5 to Agility, Guard gives a +6 to Stamina, etc).

Also, mastering a class passes it's passive to all other classes instead of just Freelancer/Mime(with the exception of Berserker obviously). So Mastering Blue Mage gets you Learning on all classes, Samurai gets you it's dodging skill, etc.

Some abilities have been changed around too. Imagine my surprise when Summoner went to Summoner level 2 and unlocked Call, and when my Samurai had it's instakill move as it's class ability instead of GilToss.

Definitely an interesting change to the game overall and I'm quite enjoying it so far.

[English Language]

Oracle Update
----------------
So after finally farming the 30 Light Staves, I had to level up some more to survive a hit and a Holy, but I firmly believe this strategy to be good.

Fight-No real threat. I can take 2 before I need to Elixir(so I can survive Holy).
White Hole-The biggest pain, as with all solos who can't equip the Aegis Shield. Misses most of the time IME, but of course, it hitting requires a reset.
Holy-If I've only lost one Fight's worth of health, I can survive it. Elixir after it.
Flare-Usually kills me, I need to be at full health to tank it. I could level up more, but I won't unless it's THAT big of a problem.
Doom-The Game Over it always is. I'd prefer him to use White Hole if anything, since it can at least miss.
Meteor-Kills me if it shows up unless it rolls extremely low. Yet to happen.

My plan for Neo Exdeath.

1. Magic Lamp Odin to eliminate Part 4(I read that it works, but not the Summoner's Odin, is because Magic Lamp's Odin is coded to only use Zantetsuken, whereas Summoner's uses the other attack if Heavy enemies are present).
2. Throw every Light Staff at Part 1 to eliminate Grand Cross part ASAP, hope it favors Slow/Stop/Paralyze effects.
3. With it gone, use !Predict to knock down the remaining parts, carefully keeping track of their HP.
4. When one gets low, if the other is not, use Sage Staff to bop it down.
5. Syldra for the win.

All I need now is enough luck to beat the tree form.

[English Language]

Oracle Final Update
----------------------
After dying an unacceptable amount of times to Flare, I pulled out to gain 2 levels..then 2 more because I was furious my MP didn't end in 5(my final Max MP ended up being 555, so there ). Anywho, Exdeath.

Went in with...

Light Staff
(nothing)
Circlet
Black Robe
Hermes Sandals

Once again, the biggest issue was White Hole for most of the fight. It missed a lot, but one hit and it's back to the title screen for me. Doom and Meteor sucked as well, as they were game overs whenever they showed, so once they could come up in the script, they weren't allowed to. At least White Hole can fail, those two just end me.

Took me about 11 Light Staves to beat this one down whenever I managed to beat the tree phase. While I feel I COULD have won without farming those staves, the amount of time it would have taken makes it unacceptable when nearly every round of the fight has a chance for Exdeath to throw an instant death attack at you, so overall I feel that even with as long as it took farming the stupid things, this was still the right decision in the end.

Neo Exdeath was another beast altogether. Magic Lamp for Zantetsuken of course. Once the fight started for real, I repeated tree phase strategy and started breaking Light Staves at Part 1. On my winning run, Grand Cross came up 4 times before he finally bit the dust. First was Frog that was countered by Maiden's Kiss, then Mini with Mallet, then nothing, then...OLD!? Crap, no item cures Old, and no !Predict ability could get rid of it as well. Perhaps it was another reset? Unless....wait, maybe !Condemn has something?

Rejuvenation - HP restore
Recuperation - Esuna
Brimstone - Fire damage
Black Frost - Ice damage
Judgment - Thunder damage
Salienta - Frog
Doom(exactly how it sounds, instant death)
Still Wing - Stop

Yes! Recuperation, up till now the second most useless of the !Condemn abilities(behind Stop) acts as Esuna! And Haste status halves the counter(rounded down) to 2 seconds, meaning Old barely has time to do anything! Sure it hits my level and stats a bit, but heck yes!

Anywho, a few more Staves and Part 1 bit the dust. At this point, I brought up 2 calculators to keep track of the last 2 part's HP. As Sullla mentions, Part 1 is by far the most dangerous part of the fight, and if you act smart, the other 2 simply cannot kill you. I spent the fight cycling between Divine Judgement and Eruption, then spent every free turn afterwards using !Condemn(Rejuvenation) to cut down on Elixir usage. Since neither of these use my character's stats, Old's status cuts had no effect on them, though I could tell Nostra was slightly slower than normal.

Using the calculators, I kept careful track of their HP. Since !Predict's damage varies depending on the target's HP digit, I couldn't just spam it until they died, and indeed it turned out to be a good idea since once part 3 hit ~4000 HP, part 2 still had ~17000. So now I was stuck having to beat an extra 13000 HP down with the Sage Staff, ~360 damage a pop right? Well, turns out I highly overestimated how much farming I'd need to to, and out of the 30 I figured I'd need, I had 9 left over . 3 of those quickly took him down, and a few Sage Staff bops to even the numbers out.

Now with my great Magic, this should surely be enough, Syldra, kill!...for 2880 damage . Ok, I probably should have tested how much damage it'd do before assuming anything. Ah! But surely with only ~1500 left, the next summon should end it!..or it's Carbuncle for reflect. I try again after it gets Dispelled and..Catoblepas for no effect...then Golem, who at least blocked a Vacuum Wave. You guys are killing me here. Finally, Titan appears and ends this summoning comedy once and for all.




Final Thoughts
-----------------
Definitely an interesting class. Oracle's abilities not scaling with stats was frustrating since it has a really good Magic stats, but worked well in the early game and !Predict more than carried it's own weight even up to the endgame as long as you were careful with it. !Predict's inability to trigger counters is somewhat both a blessing and a curse. Great when you're fighting an enemy with a dangerous counter, bad when that counter triggers important things, like Sol Cannon's self-target Punishment counter and Gilgamesh's fight endings.
Probably the most frustrating thing about Oracle is it's lack of equipment choices. You get Staves and Robes, that's about it. While the lack of weapons meant I had a good excuse to stick with the Healing Staff for most of the game, the lack of armor options was easily the thing that hurt me the most since I couldn't defend against most statuses and didn't get much in the way of stat boosts.

Overall a fun and interesting class, not one I would want to do again however.

[T-hawk]

Nice, glad you got it done and thanks for the report! Was that actually the first try that you beat Neo Exdeath?

[English Language]

I wish. The tree form itself took a number of resets until I found how many hit points I'd need to survive(and even then still took a lot of luck with White Hole missing, and Doom and Meteor never showing up)

The second phase took me about 4 attempts, all 3 failed attempts from Grand Cross inflicting Petrification or Doom, and even the last attempt could have screwed me over had Old bothered the Oracle much. Though as always, once the Grand Cross part is down, the fight's essentially over unless I screw something up, the only tricky part was making sure !Predict didn't kill one part too early.